


say something loving

by strikereurekapitcrew



Series: repetition [6]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: EVERYTHING IS ANGST, F/F, Julia Burnsides Lives, Minor Julia Burnsides/Magnus Burnsides, dwelf julia burnsides, eighth bird julia burnsides, the character death is a canon death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-08 00:12:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15231108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikereurekapitcrew/pseuds/strikereurekapitcrew
Summary: "Are you looting a corpse's ashes?" she hears Taako joke.





	say something loving

It takes her a while to find Lup. She’s miles away from where the Starblaster is held up, at the top of a hill and watching the valley below. It seems peaceful, her hair caught in the breeze, red robe tight around her shoulders. A towering oak tree dwarfs her by comparison.

She looks… tired. Like the century of everything has finally caught up with her, and like there is no joy left. She looks heartbroken, and Julia hurts for her, with her.

She’s seen, of course. Julia will never forget the circle of black glass, the way it sounded under her boots, and the way her heart ached at the devastation that surrounded it.

She can only imagine how Lup must feel, knowing she’s caused it all.

“You can say it, if you want to,” the high elf says softly, and the broken way her voice catches over those words breaks her even more. Her dark eyes dart up to Julia’s face, then away again. “ _I told you_.”

Julia…

Doesn’t say a word. Sinks to her friend’s side and takes her hand, slipping shorter fingers between Lup’s long and elegant ones, her slender hand cradled between both of Julia’s

“Now isn’t the time or place,” the dwelf replies, lifting the other woman’s hand to press a gentle kiss to her fingertips. “Look at you. Your heart is broken. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Lup’s fingers twitch against her mouth, and the sound she makes is like someone has ripped her open.

“Oh, Jules,” she sighs softly, taking her hand back. “What you must think of me right now…”

“I think that you made a decision, and you’re realizing that it wasn’t the right one,” Julia tells her, and she moves to where Lup has secluded herself at her side, fitting her head to the older woman’s shoulder.

“I should’ve listened to you and Lucy…”

“Hindsight is clear only because you can look back and see your mistakes. Someone I love told me that, once.”

Lup hums softly. “I wonder who that was.”

Julia smiles into the soft fabric of her robe, closing her eyes at the faintest odor of neroli still clinging to it from the last time it was washed. “This pretty fireball of an elf,” she murmurs, shifting enough to let Lup enfold her in her arms. “She’s brilliant, really. And her cupcakes are top notch, but don’t tell her big brother I said that.”

It gets a laugh out of Lup, though the somber silence settles over them again, Lup’s burning hot lips pressed to Julia’s forehead.

“You had the right idea, you know… Giving your portion of Light to Magnus…” she mumbles into the quiet, her voice barely louder than the whisper of the wind in the trees.

“I don’t know that I did,” Julia says honestly. “With the Gauntlet… we can see it all happening, and it’s quick. The Chalice…” she sighs. “It can erase events in Toril’s history, and we wouldn’t even know it… I think, for me, not knowing is the worst part.”

It drags another sigh from Lup's lips, and it doesn't make either of them feel better. This is... horrible. And the truth really is that while Lucretia told them it wasn't a good idea, and Julia begged for another solution, she really doesn't have the heart to even think  _I told you_. It's not the time. It will never be the time.

"What are you going to do?"

Lup sighs again, a shuddering, soft sound that makes Julia think that she's going to cry, probably.

"I want to take it back. I want to hide it... I... I can't keep letting this happen. I know what we said, but just-"

Julia presses her face to Lup's shoulder and squeezes her, caging but not imprisoning, her arms saying what she can't find the words to.

"I'll come with you."

"Jules-"

"Please. Don't fight me on this. I'll come with you, and we'll... we'll do something. You can't go alone."

Lup pulls away to look at her, earthy eyes clouding with tears. " _Julia,"_  she says, in that plaintive little way that's pleading with the younger woman to help her find the words to say.

Julia shakes her head. "You don't have to say."

The night that they agree to meet, under the same tree, Julia is late and Lup is afraid. Afraid she lied, afraid she didn't and was hurt on the way. But she knows what she has to do, and she'll do it without Julia if she has to. 

She waits as long as she can, and leaves.

The battle rages on, and it isn't long before the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet razes the entire battle to the ground, including the wielder. Her heart aches as she crosses the field of black glass and rips it from the man's hand, watching the skeleton left behind crumple to ash. Julia found a dwarf who could help them hide the Gauntlet, where nobody would ever find it again, and she is supposed to meet him just outside of Phandalin. She has to move.

 

He stabs her. She pushes him into the vault and slams the door, pressing her back into it as he explodes into a pillar of flame behind it. 

The feeling of dying is... familiar, but there is no comfort here. Silverpoint moves fast, and this is the world that they are going to stay on. Surely some form of necromancy can bring her body back. It'll be okay.

That is until she's dead and realizes that she's living arcane energy, and her umbrella, her beloved Umbrastaff, is her undoing. She wakes up in a cage of velvet, with no escape. She screams, but is not heard. Lup crafted her own prison, and now she must languish there.

Time moves on without her.

It isn't until much later that she hears their voices, feels her family come back to her that she starts to use her voice again. But Taako cannot hear her. Nor can Julia.

The latter takes the handle of the Umbrastaff after Merle, and while Lup is... kinder, as she loves Julia and is so happy to hear her voice, Julia is not who will benefit from her power.

 

Foolhardy as it is to watch Merle go flying and then reach for the umbrella herself, Julia -for once- rushes in and does it anyway. As to be expected, a surge of electric energy courses through her, knocks her flat onto her back and knocks the wind out of her lungs. There's something about it that's familiar, and she can't explain the prickling hurt she feels at being rejected. She gets up to try again, stopped when Taako charges forward with a chipper, "My turn!"

It's... resplendent, in a word, watching him realized as the person to wield this unusual weapon. Power rolls off of it, hits her in her chest, and it's... right. Unlike so many things in their lives, it's nothing short of right.

The power surge that rolled off of the umbrella rattling in her bones, Julia looks back at the skeleton as it disintegrates on the cave floor.

There’s something sorrowful in her chest, like being stuck through the middle with a spear, looking at this poor creature, nothing left but the ashes its red robes and bones.

Who were they? What led to them being here, in Wave Echo Cave? In front of this forgotten vault.

Julia can hear the boys cracking jokes behind her, can see Gundren trying to open the vault, and drops to her knees slowly, the ground crunching beneath them.

A dwarvish prayer leaves her lips, for wanderers, for the  _lost._ Yes, this creature was lost. Lost to the world, to those who loved them. They're gone, with only three idiots and Julia to remember them. Her hand sifts through the ash, scooping some into a vial that she hadn't filled with a potion for well over a month, and that's when she finds the ring.

Her heart fucking breaks, shatters in her chest and gores her tender insides with the splinters. She knows the markings on this ring, the few that she can actually read, because they're the same as the ones on the ring she forged for Magnus when they married. They're an oath of love, written in old, old Dwarvish.  Oaths of loyalty, longevity, companionship. This person meant a whole hell of a lot to someone to have just died here alone.

"Are you looting a corpse's ashes?" she hears Taako joke.

"No," she replies, and reaches up to clasp the chain around her neck. The ring will need polishing, but maybe, just maybe she can find the person who forged it. "Someone loved them, in life. Someone loved them like I love _Magnus_. It's not right to leave it here."

 

Standing before the blackened figure of Gundren, the gauntlet is… beautiful. She can feel the tug of it, but it’s disgusting, her skin crawling at just the thought of putting it on. But for a moment, just a moment, Julia feels close to it. Wants to cradle the relic to her chest and crumple to the ground in tears and…

And she doesn’t understand it.

She doesn’t even have the time before Taako’s taken the Gauntlet, resisted it and thrown it into his bag.  The vial of ash and the ring pressed to her sternum feel like they're burning holes in her soul.

And she doesn't know why.

There are no answers when Killian takes them to her boss, only more questions. Why does this dignified women exhibit the faintest moment of shock at the sight of the umbrella, for example, and why is it hidden behind a facade so quickly? Why does Julia have the strangest sense that she's been here before, that she knows something about this place, something about that giant jellyfish?

There are no answers, only questions.

So many questions.

 

Later, in Refuge, she's thrown on her back again. Her head hurts, her vision darkening quickly. Dying, not the first time since they've arrived, she's dying.

A soft voice she swears she knows from somewhere whispers to her.

_It's okay, love. It's okay to rest. Just close your eyes._

The clock chimes, then begins to fall, and she does.

The ring she's carried since Phandalin doesn't burn this time, but is so warm against her skin, as if someone holds her hand.

The old woman is on the ground this time, looks 140 and like she doesn't have much time left.

So Julia gets up and keeps fighting and swears, for a moment, that the sky is a delicate lavender for the first time in five years.

 

It's not until after Wonderland, sat across from the Lich, that things are making sense. There are still too many holes, too much static. But he promises answers while they keep watch, and stops, flickering briefly, when he sees the ring catch in the light.

" ** ** _Where did you get that ring, -----?_**** " he says, and then there's static again, though she can see the flicker that tells her that he's saying something. She's since deduced that it's a name, that he knows her and what she's missing is a name.

"When Taako found the umbrella, the skeleton and its robes turned to ashes. I found this in the mix," Julia tells the Lich, reaching up to touch the ring. "I know the symbols, they're-"

" _ ** **Important. An oath,****_ " he finishes, and she nods. 

"I wanted to get it back to the person who gave it... so that..." Julia trails off, heaving a shaking breath. "A fool's errand, you know? We're all gonna die here."

The Lich flickers again, and she almost swears that his skeletal face is in pain.

" _ ** **Don't give up just yet, kid. Ain't a cause lost as long as one fool still fights for it. You might be closer than you think.****_ "

 

Julia drinks from the flask that Barry hands her.

Julia drinks and she  _remembers._

 

She remembers the gauntlet, remembers the way Lup's fingers felt pressed to her lips, remembers Lup and love and light and  _Lup_.

She remembers Lucretia, remembers trying to stand because Lup couldn't go alone, Julia wouldn't let her. 

She remembers falling. Falling in love and falling to magic. Remembers the sense of loss at the sight of the dead Red Robe and not knowing why. Remembers the feeling of rejection when the Umbra Staff attacked her and not knowing  _why._

She remembers Lup.

And there's awe and joy and pain when Taako breaks the Umbra Staff over his knee and she's there again.

"I found your ring," Julia breathes as Lup floats closer to her, reaches out to touch but can't make contact in her Lich form.

" _ ** **Hold onto that for me,**** " _Lup tells her with a grin. " ** _It's been doing a great job keeping you safe so far, and we aren't done yet._** "


End file.
